Category Archives: Sociolinguistics

Why Do The Supposedly Liberal Doods Link Sex And Derogation?

Posted on January 8, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Here’s a picture of Guiliani: Here is a link referencing “nipple clamps” with respect to that photograph, and over at Eschaton this gets escalated to a porn allusion: Late Night Rowwwr! Everyone wants to see Rudy Giuliani rub his nipples. … Continue reading →

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Isabel Allende talks about writing, women, passion, feminism.

Posted on January 8, 2008 by Ann Bartow

Watch it here.

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Embryo Adoption?

Posted on January 8, 2008 by Ann Bartow

I was at the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) conference last week and there, amid all legal publishing companies and on-line search services in the Exhibitor’s Hall, was a table for something called Embryo Connection, which works with the … Continue reading →

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Did “Feminists” Attempt to “Censor” Santa Claus?

Posted on December 29, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Despite reports like this and this, the Snopes account is quite different. Via the Hathor Legacy. Naturally crap like this is for sale, but obviously feminists are supposed to be intimidated into silence about it. Cartoon from here. –Ann Bartow

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Dangerous Brains

Posted on December 19, 2007 by Bridget Crawford

Bridget’s mother is one of the smartest people she knows.   But her mother often proclaims,”If I had a brain, I’d be dangerous,”after making a mistake. Tony’s mother dropped out of high school and later earned her G.E.D. Yet, she … Continue reading →

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From the Department of Everything Gets Commodified: “Vajajay” as Trademark for Beauty, Hair Care and Personal Care Products?

Posted on December 16, 2007 by Ann Bartow

An application was filed on November 27, 2007. (NYT account of the word here. Feministing reaction here.)

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Are These Earrings Funny Or Pervy?

Posted on December 14, 2007 by Ann Bartow

You can’t buy them here because they are sold out.

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This Effin’ Post Is Dedicated To Christopher M. Fairman

Posted on December 11, 2007 by Ann Bartow

The link explaining the picture is here. The background behind the dedication is here. The warped sense of humor is mine. –Ann Bartow

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A new study by Thomas E. Ford of Western Carolina University concludes jokes about blonde’s intelligence and women drivers lead to hostile feelings and discrimination against women

Posted on December 7, 2007 by Ann Bartow

From here via The Situationist: A research project led by a Western Carolina University psychology professor indicates that jokes about blondes and women drivers are not just harmless fun and games; instead, exposure to sexist humor can lead to toleration … Continue reading →

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Dick Cheney Accuses Two Male Democratic Pols Of Having Tiny Wieners

Posted on December 7, 2007 by Ann Bartow

And apparently he thinks Nancy Pelosi shrunk them. Below is an excerpt from this article: Most striking were his virtually taunting remarks of two men he described as friends from his own days in the House: Democratic Reps. John Dingell … Continue reading →

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When I saw this photo montage, my first thought was, “I’m glad they didn’t show Hillary with the corndog.”

Posted on December 6, 2007 by Ann Bartow

The pictures are from this NYT article about food, weight and fitnes on the campaign trail. One trope of Supposedly Liberal Dood bloggers is to eroticize or homoeroticize the consumption of corn dogs as a means of insult, which I … Continue reading →

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Avoid Spirit Airlines

Posted on December 5, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Here’s why. And, see also. Gee, what island is that exactly? The one that looks like a reclining woman?

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No Kidding.

Posted on December 4, 2007 by Ann Bartow

“Silence is Golden, But Only for Women”

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The Hosiery Industry Wants Us To Wear Panty Hose Again

Posted on December 4, 2007 by Ann Bartow

So we can probably look forward to more “fashion news reporting” like this: … Katie Couric has been one of the most stalwart and high-profile bare-leggers, bringing her tanned gams into living rooms every day with the TV news. But … Continue reading →

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What To Make Of This?

Posted on December 4, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Every once in a while I visit Overheard In Law School. So far, to my great relief, I haven’t read anything familiar there, meaning as far as I can tell, none of the embarrasing comments were mine. But there’s always … Continue reading →

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Obama, Gender Essentialism and Presidential Politics

Posted on December 1, 2007 by Bridget Crawford

“Feminist Pitch by a Democrat Named Obama.”   That’s the headline of this article from today’s New York Times.   Here’s an excerpt, describing Senator Obama’s pitch to women in early-voting states: The breakthrough nature of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s … Continue reading →

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Cows : Milk :: Women : Sex?

Posted on November 30, 2007 by Bridget Crawford

Who will buy a cow if the milk is free?”   These are the words that a man (age 60+) spoke in my presence about the plans of a younger woman (age 20+) to live with her boyfriend without getting … Continue reading →

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Hey MSM, can you please stop referencing her “secret life as an Internet porn performer” now?

Posted on November 30, 2007 by Ann Bartow

She’s dead. Her body has been recovered. This article notes: Police insisted that Sander’s Internet activity had no connection to her disappearance. “The issue of the Internet and the spinoff of that has been literally crippling our investigation,” Boren said. … Continue reading →

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“Jane Austen Must Die!”

Posted on November 30, 2007 by Ann Bartow

That’s the title of a column by Jennifer Armstrong exhorting women to demand more from literature, television and movies than yet another Austen-like story. Here is an excerpt: … God knows we’ve progressed in so many ways, but even though … Continue reading →

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A Rumination About The Genders of Food

Posted on November 29, 2007 by Ann Bartow

In the form of this Cat and Girl strip. Via the f word.

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A Gesture For Unflipping Someone Off

Posted on November 29, 2007 by Ann Bartow

From here, where the author notes: When the light turned green, the car ahead of me just sat there. I gave it a good five seconds (i.e., 0.5 seconds) and then blasted my horn. “What did you do that for?” … Continue reading →

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“Norman Mailer wins bad sex award”

Posted on November 27, 2007 by Ann Bartow

And not because he is dead, either, although that can’t have helped matters any. It’s for the “explicit rendition of the incestuous encounter” between Hitler’s parents, as follows: … Mailer, who died of renal failure last month at 84, was … Continue reading →

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RECALCULATING! (You weak-bladdered loser…)

Posted on November 25, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Some of you may have already guessed from the title of this post that I just returned from a long car trip, and used a GPS unit to navigate. Every time I deviated from the official directions, the clipped British … Continue reading →

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Externalities Illustrated

Posted on November 20, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Today’s NYT featires an article entitled At Jets Game, a Halftime Ritual of Harassment that reports: At halftime of the Jets’ home game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday, several hundred men lined one of Giants Stadium’s two pedestrian ramps … Continue reading →

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Not With The Band

Posted on November 17, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Every year I buy season’s tickets to the men’s basketball games, and reside in the nosebleed section, the faculty and staff seats where none of the rich fans would ever consider sitting. Tonight a better connected friend gave me his … Continue reading →

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Much Ado About Pronouns . . .

Posted on November 14, 2007 by Kathleen Bergin

In Connection Distributing v. Keisler, the Sixth Circuit struck down on First Amendment overbreadth grounds certain record keeping requirements of the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act. I’m struck not by the specific ruling in the case, but by three … Continue reading →

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Supposedly Liberal Dood Bully Bloggers Try To Silence Criticism of Porn by Democrat

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Ann Bartow

To suggest anything negative about porn is to automatically trigger an orchrestrated freak out by supposedly liberal doods who are trying to bully themselves into control of the “progressive” political discourse. Atrios writes: The Great Porn Controversy of Aught 7 … Continue reading →

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An Unexpected Flash of Something That Looks Very Much Like Feminism

Posted on November 4, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Here, of all places. Below is an excerpt: … Every presidential candidate, and most other politicians, since 1980, have been bowing and scraping before this constituency. But for some reason, the hunting trips and codpieces and brush clearing and all … Continue reading →

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“The Origins of the Word “Sexism””

Posted on October 26, 2007 by Ann Bartow

At Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog.

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Hate Speech Debate

Posted on October 26, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Steven Rose writes: There goes the Science… Oliver Kamm replies: There goes liberty Chris Bertram weighs in: The elimination of bigotry is a perfectly legitimate aim of government The primary focus is race, but there is obvious applicability to gender. … Continue reading →

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Elizabeth M. Glazer, “When Obscenity Discriminates”

Posted on October 26, 2007 by Ann Bartow

The abstract: When public indecency statutes outlaw gender nonconformity, obscenity discriminates; when movie ratings censor representations of sexual minorities, obscenity discriminates, and discriminates on the basis of their status as sexual minorities. This Article addresses obscenity doctrine’s infliction of first … Continue reading →

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Don’t You Have Something More Important To Do?

Posted on October 24, 2007 by Ann Bartow

I just thought I’d get that tired derailment query out there, since it is inevitably raised when you ask a question that makes someone uncomfortable. No, for the next three or four minutes, I don’t. Regarding the expression “law porn,” … Continue reading →

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Guess I’m not going to get a serious answer…

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Dan Solove posted about “A Law Porn Blog” here at Concurring Opinions. I raised this query: “I’m curious, why is the analogy/metaphor law PORN?” And I’d really like to know why “porn” is the descriptor of choice for fancy brochures … Continue reading →

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Lavender Languages & Linguistics XV (Feb. 15-17, 2008)

Posted on October 17, 2007 by Ann Bartow

The Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference examines language use in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer life. Languages and linguistics are broadly defined here, to include studies of: pronunciation, vocabulary and meaning, conversational structures and styles, life stories and other … Continue reading →

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“Public censure for judge who said lawyer had ‘nice butt'”

Posted on October 15, 2007 by Ann Bartow

From the NY Daily News: When a local judge laughingly said in open court that criminal defense lawyer Ruth Boyer had “a nice butt,” she was not flattered. The sexist comment by LaGrange Town Justice Edmund Caplicki, made in July … Continue reading →

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MRAs 101

Posted on October 15, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Shakespeare’s Sister writes: A few days ago, one of my readers emailed me asking what an MRA is. Given that the term tends to get thrown around at Shakes without much explanation, I asked Shakes contributor Jeff Fecke — a … Continue reading →

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Lolita Buckner Inniss, “A ‘Ho New World: Raced and Gendered Insult as Ersatz Carnival and the Corruption of Freedom of Expression Norms”

Posted on October 14, 2007 by Ann Bartow

The abstract: Carnivalization, a concept developed by literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and later employed in broad social and cultural contexts, is the tearing down of social norms, the elimination of boundaries and the inversion of established hierarchies. It is the … Continue reading →

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Wow, a Nobel for Doris Lessing!

Posted on October 11, 2007 by Ann Bartow

NYT story here. Like so many women, The Golden Notebook made a profound impression on me when I was in college. A much more recent book, Love, Again, was terrific too. I didn’t like The Sweetest Dream so much, the … Continue reading →

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The Myth of Mars and Venus

Posted on October 10, 2007 by David S. Cohen

This post’s title is the title of a new book by British linguist Deborah Cameron. The book explodes the Mars/Venus industry (John Gray, Deborah Tannen, Simon Baron-Cohen, etc.) and instead concludes that men and women communicate in very similar ways. … Continue reading →

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Is “Good for the Goose” a Gendered Phrase?

Posted on October 9, 2007 by Bridget Crawford

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander” is a phrase I haven’t heard in a long time.   A friend used it  yesterday to describe  why an individual, whom I will call Person B, engaged in particular … Continue reading →

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“Women, Our Books, Our History”

Posted on October 9, 2007 by Ann Bartow

A nostalgic post about women’s bookstores at “a little red hen.”

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“Girls’s Costume Warehouse”

Posted on October 9, 2007 by Ann Bartow

A faux commercial satirizing mass market Halloween costumes for women, with expletives aplenty. On the same topic, see also this, this, this and this.

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Online Magazine Jezebel Asks: “Ever Had A Boss Who Made You Hate Men?”

Posted on October 8, 2007 by Ann Bartow

The post and hair raising comments in reply are here.

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Al Sharpton Calls for Boycott of Knicks

Posted on October 8, 2007 by Bridget Crawford

From wnyc.org, New York local public radio: Al Sharpton is vowing to lead protests against Madison Square Garden, unless Knicks coach Isiah Thomas apologizes for suggesting that blacks and whites should be held to different standards when it comes to … Continue reading →

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Wooden Logo Puzzle For Children

Posted on October 7, 2007 by Ann Bartow

The distributor’s blurb: “Because it’s never too early to learn what’s important in life.” Ugh. Via Counterfeit Chic. –Ann Bartow

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And It’s Another Round Of “Let’s Mock A Woman’s Looks If We Disagree With Her Politics”

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Brought to you by Sexist Supposedly Liberal Doods (the link goes here, the comments both places are typically disgusting.)

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A Cartoon About Gender and the Internet

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Here. Via Dr. Socks.

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Today South Carolina Celebrates “Cockfest”

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Ann Bartow

Do I make this stuff up? No I do not. –Ann Bartow

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“… The emails also revealed that MediaDefender probably was negotiating with the New York Attorney General’s office to allow them access to information about users accessing pornographic material.”

Posted on September 24, 2007 by Ann Bartow

One more example of the confluence of copyright “enforcement,” pornography, and the complete absence of privacy on the Internets explained here and here.

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When a Man is a “Bitch”

Posted on September 22, 2007 by Bridget Crawford

Isiah Thomas may or may not have called a particular female colleague a”bitch.”   That’s for a jury to decide.   But based on my own work experience, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.   Or if he didn’t, … Continue reading →

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